Helen Kroger (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

He was the Chief Minister, but these are the things that have direct correlation to the experience he brings to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee. He was shadow minister for legal and consumer affairs, Treasurer and the list goes on.

There was an interjection by the minister, Senator Ludwig, before he left the chamber before the conclusion of this debate to the effect that the committee could not sort this out. You may be surprised to know that the committee has never discussed dumping—and that is all that you can call it—Senator Humphries from the head of this committee and replacing him with Senator Wright. Not once has this come up in a committee meeting, and it begs the question: why not? I understand that the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee meets on a weekly basis. It does not take a rocket scientist to work out that this committee has met probably close to 30 times already this year, but not once have those on the crossbenches or in the government deemed the democratic Senate process or the committee system important enough to raise in a committee meeting that they were interested in taking the chair's position. That smacks of total hypocrisy. The Greens know they control the agenda of the government. They control what actually happens here and, as Senator Abetz pointed out, they are pursuing and enjoying the spoils of being in both government and opposition. What this all comes down to is: who is actually wagging the tail of the dog of the government? We know that it is the Greens.

The day the Greens signed their formal alliance with the government was a very dark, sad day for this nation. On that day a minor party which managed to garner only 11 per cent of the primary vote—it had an electoral mandate of only 11 per cent—began to dictate to this nation the agenda that we have seen being rolled out. We are seeing it again today. This is an absolute indictment of the Greens. Their thirst for further authority and power knows no bounds, and this motion is yet another demonstration of that. We do not support Senator Brown's amendment to Senator Abetz's amendment. We do not support it at all. We do not question the integrity and the ability of the Greens senators; we question the rationale that a further committee chairmanship should be taken from the opposition. The reason we question it is pretty straightforward. It only takes a fairly sane and rational person to look at the Notice Paper to determine that this position should be taken from the government.

The opposition makes up about 44 per cent of the composition of the Senate; we are allocated about 43 per cent of committee positions. I am not going to quibble over one per cent. We consider that to be a fair and reasonable representation of our electoral mandate to this place. We know that the government and the Greens are in a formal alliance—others may call it a coalition. We on this side of the chamber, the Liberal and National parties, believe this is a coalition. They have a signed document, which they framed to forge their alliance—a formal alliance, to put it in the words of Senator Brown and the Prime Minister. Together they are seeking to increase their committee representation from over 52 per cent now to 62 per cent, so that three-fifths of the committee positions in this chamber will be allocated to the government and Greens alliance. No sane, rational person could suggest that that is a reasonable suggestion. There is no electoral mandate for this. The purpose of the Senate is that we represent our states, and this motion flies in the face of that.

I can never get past the photo opportunity, the press conference, after the Prime Minister negotiated with the Greens or, more to the point, effectively, the Greens negotiated with the government. I will never forget the day she did an interview after forming her minority government. If you had looked through a crystal ball you would have seen that that photo depicted what we could expect from this Labor-Greens government. In that photo were the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Greens, front and centre. Around them both were the Independents. The smile on the face of the Leader of the Greens was enough to light a light globe—probably all the light globes in this place. The expressions on the faces of those in the photo said it all. In that photo you could see the Prime Minister's realisation of just how far she had gone in selling your souls to the Greens so that you could form a minority government.